Doctor Who Series 9 Grumbles

Rather than a full review of the latest series of Doctor Who, I just need to get a few grumbles out there. I like Capaldi in the the role, I just would like him to be given better material to work with. The plots are ill-defined, inconsistent, and shallow. Like many of the more recent Doctor Who series, they tend to centre around the Doctor, rather than be stories in themselves, that happen to feature him; they only exist because he does. This isn't conducive to strong plot-lines.

Anyway, here are some grumbles...

Episode 11 - Heaven Sent
Starting well, with an interesting premise, there were too many things that didn't add up:

• if 'something' was resetting the environment every time, why didn't they erase "I'm in 12" and 'bird', etc
• if it was only resetting things on the surface (filling in holes, but not erasing writing within them) then why wasn't it renewing Clara's picture?
• why wasn't it restoring the "harder than diamond" wall?
• maybe it only reset the higher floors of the towers ... this might explain why there were skulls (no stools though) in the water - but who was restoring the fuel for the fire which dried the Doctor's clothes? It can't have been the environment, as it would have removed the Doctor's clothes. Maybe it was the Doctor himself? From where though?

In any case, this meant the first Doctor was wandering around naked.

And then, he's a Time Lord. If he dies he regenerates. So why didn't he regenerate when killed? Why weren't there billions of Doctors wondering around at the the end?

Yes - I know it's hard to make a consistent time-loop story. So keep away from them if you can't do it. Creating problems, and not solving them correctly is poor (see 'Sherlock - Series 3').

My major issue, though, is the idea of being able to simply regenerate a Time Lord from stored data in a matter transporter. If this is all it takes, then any race that has teleported a Time Lord can get Time Lords for themselves. Why haven't the Daleks, the Cybermen, whoever, utilised this? Bred their own controlled version, enslaved to their wishes? A Time Lord ought to be more than the simple collection of atoms of their bodies. If you're changing such a big premise, you're changing it forever. Yet I suspect this idea will be dropped, and never mentioned again. In fact, if this is all it takes, why bother with regeneration at all? And doesn't any race with matter transporters now have this regeneration technology? Infinite daleks now - no need to build them.

Episode 12 - Hell Bent
"They'll kill you, you know" - ominous music. Or, they'll lay down their arms, disobey orders, and help you. Faux danger. Poor.

The Hybrid. If 'only one story in the Matrix' had mentioned the threat of the Hybrid I'd have been okay with it. But "all of them" did. So the Time Lords have always known about this threat? So why attack the Doctor now? Why not question him on any previous occasion? By saying 'all the stories' you open yourself up to this issue, so why do it? It's like you didn't think it through, or thought your viewers weren't that bright? The story ends, as far as I can tell, with the Time Lords still no more enlightened on the The Hybrid - the Doctor and Clara escape as they are still puzzling over the issue. So they'll still be chasing the Doctor about it next series then. Or not.

Killing a Time Lord. "We're on Gallifrey; it's no more than man-flu". Well, if the death of a Time Lord is such a casual affair, why the big drama when the Doctor regenerates? What if the The General had a wife and family? Friends? Are they casually dismissed - "here's your new dad/mum now kids" What if he was on his final regeneration?  It's done so casually, because it's not a real character - it's just a plot device, with no purpose beyond that. 

Sonic screwdrivers aren't built. They make themselves, and appear when needed. Just in time for Christmas it seems. Sunglasses harder to sell to children I'd bet.


Since midway through Tennant's run, too often there's been too much 'hokey' rubbish. Where are the real stories? Where's the consistency? Didn't Clara (dalek-Clara) erase all Doctor knowledge from the Dalek database?  Didn't this take? Did they restore from a cloud-backup? 

In the very first episode of the series, the Daleks were hunting the Doctor, but unable to find him. And yet, one of the Vikings was actually a dalek in disguise, so they had found him all along, and the only reason we had the Missy/Clara storyline was to get them there. Just ... why?

Beyond anything else it's the scandalous under-use of Clara's character which irks. Admittedly she's been central to this series, but still primarily as a damsel-in-distress, not as the peer she was suggested to be, at her excellent introduction.


Where's Tom Baker when you need him. I know it's a Saturday evening family show; but that isn't an excuse. Do better.